Three years, two months and a week — more than 1100 days — after the 2008 presidential election, internal investigators at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement are still probing who leaked the immigration status of then-Sen. Barack Obama’s aunt Zeituni Onyango just three days before voters went to the polls.
Relevant files from ICE’s Office of Professional Responsibility are “part of an ongoing investigation” and will not be disclosed, an ICE official wrote in a Jan. 11 response to TPM’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for documents related to the investigation.
Onyango was granted asylum in the United States because of the leak, which an immigration judge called “reckless.”
Ryan J. Reilly
Ryan J. Reilly is a D.C.-based reporter for TPM. Prior to joining TPM, he worked for a news website covering the Justice Department and was a researcher for Bloomberg News. His email address is ryan(at)talkingpointsmemo.com.
Facebook Conversations
Questions about commenting with non-Facebook accounts like Yahoo, or other concerns? Click here to read the TPM Commenting FAQ.